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Discussion: Cyberpunk. Or maybe not.
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CodexFetishist |
Cyberpunk. Or maybe not.
Mar 18 2008, 12:24 PM EDT
Your reference to Bruce Sterling's novel as "cyberpunk" is a bit problematic, considering that it is a term with which Sterling himself has taken issue. In "Cyberpunk in the Nineties" (see links above), Sterling writes, "Public disavowals are useless, very likely worse than useless. Even the most sweeping changes in our philosophy of writing, perhaps the weird mid-life-crisis conversions to Islam or Santeria, could not erase the tattoo....Seen from this perspective, "cyberpunk" simply means "anything cyberpunks write." And that covers a lot of ground. I've always had a weakness for historical fantasies, myself, and Shiner writes mainstream novels and mysteries. Shirley writes horror. Rucker was last seen somewhere inside the Hollow Earth. William Gibson, shockingly, has been known to write funny short stories. All this means nothing. "Cyberpunk" will not be conclusively "dead" until the last of us is shoveled under. Demographics suggest that this is likely to take some time." According to Sterling, cyberpunk as "a voice of Bohemia--Bohemia in the 1980s," and many of the techno-social phenomena it could only have imagined--or equally alarming phenomona it couldn't imagine--have now come to pass. For this reason, it may be more useful to think of cyberpunk fiction as a literary movement lasting from 1985-1995, and the former cyberpunks, once again, simply as writers engaging their world and imagining new ones. Do you find this valuable? |
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CodexFetishist |
1. RE: Cyberpunk. Or maybe not.
Mar 18 2008, 12:27 PM EDT
To clarify: to access the Sterling article, click the hyperlink on "cyberpunk" in the last paragraph of the wiki article.
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kevin_of_los_angeles |
2. RE: Cyberpunk. Or maybe not.
Mar 18 2008, 1:01 PM EDT
Thanks for the comment--this is an important point. Since "cyberpunk" isn't a literary critical term so much as it is a Bohemian movement in which self-identification was an important part, I'll go with you on this. Nevertheless, Distraction really sounds like classic cyberpunk in a lot of places, particularly when Sterling writes deeply ironic, diachronic comparison-formulas of the sort Gibson was famous for. Take this line, for example, from Distraction: "There were town meetings in New England with more computational power than the entire U.S. government had once possessed" (Sterling 120). Compare it to this famous line from the beginning of Neuromancer: "The Japanese had already forgotten more neuroscience than the Chinese had ever known" (Gibson 4). If Sterling is no longer writing cyberpunk in 1998, if it is no longer possible to write cyberpunk in 1998 because cyberpunk is a social rather than literary category, I can accept that but I would also say the influence of what would be clearly identified with cyberpunk on Distraction is strong enough to call it an enabling force.
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